15.3.2 Compilers

The only compiler characteristics that affect libtool are the flags
needed (if any) to generate PIC objects. In general, if a C compiler
supports certain PIC flags, then any derivative compilers support the
same flags. Until there are some noteworthy exceptions to this rule,
this section will document only C compilers.

The following C compilers have standard command line options, regardless
of the platform:

gcc

This is the GNU C compiler, which is also the system compiler for many
free operating systems (FreeBSD, GNU/Hurd, GNU/Linux, Lites, NetBSD, and
OpenBSD, to name a few).

The ‘-fpic’ or ‘-fPIC’ flags can be used to generate
position-independent code. ‘-fPIC’ is guaranteed to generate
working code, but the code is slower on m68k, m88k, and Sparc chips.
However, using ‘-fpic’ on those chips imposes arbitrary size limits
on the shared libraries.

The rest of this subsection lists compilers by the operating system that
they are bundled with:

aix3*

aix4*

Most AIX compilers have no PIC flags, since AIX (with the exception of
AIX for IA-64) runs on PowerPC and RS/6000 chips. (14)

hpux10*

Use ‘+Z’ to generate PIC.

osf3*

Digital/UNIX 3.x does not have PIC flags, at least not on the PowerPC
platform.